


Lessons

by Eglantine



Category: Shakespeare - Works, The Tempest - Shakespeare
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-12
Updated: 2010-09-12
Packaged: 2017-10-11 16:35:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/114420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eglantine/pseuds/Eglantine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miranda does not know the words for what she and Caliban are. So Prospero chooses them for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lessons

When Father grew frustrated because she didn't understand her lessons, or she let her mind wander and Father would yell, Miranda would gather up her books and go to Caliban. For with Caliban, _she_ was the teacher, and was never not quick enough, or not clever enough. She had gone to him since she was a very small girl, and he spoke so very well now he had little need of her, but unlike Father, he never made her feel that way.

"What wouldst thou learn today?" Miranda called as she picked her way over the stones to her and her father and Caliban's home. Caliban, squatting in the shade, glanced over his shoulder at her. He was a bow-legged, hunch-backed beast, better shaped to lumber like an ape than to walk like a human, but when Miranda drew near he would lift his shoulders and straighten his back and stand, as best he could, like a man.

"Wouldst hear of other places?" she continued, kneeling down beside him at the mouth of the cave. "Just this day, my father did--"

"Nay," he interrupted, and Miranda stopped, and looked to him. He had settled back down into his squat beside her and said nothing more. Miranda looked down at the books in her hands. They sat silent for a long moment, and she looked up again, to the hills and trees beyond the cave.

"I can recall when I was smaller, and thou wouldst there with me play," she said. He looked up at her, and she nodded to the trees, to the hills. He nodded, too. She offered her hand and he took it-- she remembered when she would reach so and he, like a wild thing, would shy away.

"Wouldst teach me of thy father's magic?" he asked, very quietly. Miranda closed her eyes.

"O, I would," she said. "But that he will not-- he thinks me far too dull to learn such things."

"Yet he will still bewitch thee," he said darkly. "And me."

Miranda said nothing; he went on: "Did not my dam work wonders? And now, does not thy father so? Is't not our right by birth to know it too?" She looked up, then, to be called us, to be linked as one with him. Their eyes met.

"For thou and I have wit enough," he said. He reached, slowly, and touched her hair. "For thou art of this isle, Miranda, as am I." His eyes were still fixed on hers. Her eyes-- when she was a child they were clearest blue, but darkened to brown, to black, like Caliban's and like Ariel's, as she grew. She put her hand over his hand-- it was not pale and long like her father's, but small and dirtied, like his. Both wore magic about them, a dust in their hair and a stain on their fingertips, though neither knew it.

He pressed his lips to hers-- she did not know the name for such a touch, but she did not shy from it. She did not know the names for many of the things he did, the way he ran his hand along her cheek and down her neck, and she did not know the way she knew to lean close to him, to touch him, in return. They retreated deeper into the cell, and she let him lower her to the ground.

Her father found them thus when, moments later, he returned.

 

 

When Prospero came to her again, he found Miranda weeping on the rock where he had left her. She did not weep for the reasons he suspected-- she wept because he seemed so angry, because he had yelled, because he had beaten Caliban and she had been able to hear his cries. Her father knelt before her.

"Dost-- canst--" She sobbed harder, then, to see how angry he truly was. She had never known her father to be lost for words. "Miranda, know'st thou what he did?"

She shook her head. Her father stood. When he told her of the act's wickedness, of Caliban's cruelty, she minded him as she never had her other lessons, all the more because she doubted its truth. But how could he, who was so clever, be wrong? So she did not go again to Caliban. And when a strange thing, a man, came to her father's shores, she minded her father's words and feared more wickedness. And she, like one of the isle's wild things, shied away.


End file.
